As people in the local community as well as the investing world across the country wait for news of a settlement in the class-action lawsuit against Skilled Healthcare Group Inc., the jury panel in the case is taking time to reflect on the trial.

"It was a learning experience," said Donna Kaukonen, one of the 12 jurors who spent their mornings in Superior Court for more than six months. "It was intense at times, but we managed to hammer it out."

While jury verdicts in criminal trials must be unanimous, civil trials only require that nine of the 12 jury members are in agreement.

Juror Brian Walker said that interpreting the law and how it related to evidence presented in the case was the most difficult aspect of deliberations.

"The whole trial was just crazy," said Walker, who joked that the group would be getting taxed on the money earned from jury duty, which began Jan. 12. "When you spend six months watching a case, you see and hear so many different sides."

The issue that spurred the lawsuit, which spans the years from 2003 to 2009, is whether or not Skilled Healthcare facilities provided adequate staffing levels for patients. California statute mandates that nursing homes maintain 3.2 nursing hours per patient, per day (ppd), a law passed in 2000 that originally was going to be 3.4 ppd.

Bob Hart, the jury foreman responsible for facilitating dialogue during deliberations, said one point of contention between the jurors was the extent of statutory damages. In the end, the jury returned with a $677 million verdict against Skilled Healthcare, a number the panel arrived at using a formula provided by one of a handful of industry experts who testified in court.

"They kept treating 3.2 ppd as a goal -- not a minimum," said Hart, who added that there were some very stressful days in the jury box.

Hart said that it will be interesting to see what mediation talks yield, but that any decision is now out of the control of the jury.

"We don't really care what happens now," Hart said. "We wanted to send the strongest message possible to these facilities to follow the law that would reverberate throughout the country, and we think we did that."

Some feel that a settlement in which Skilled Healthcare is ordered to pay a lesser amount that would allow the company to stay in business would be the best scenario. Sheryl Skolnic is a stock analyst in the health care industry, and said that news of the possible settlement talks was good for all parties involved.

"It makes a lot of sense to try and reach a settlement that allows for a judgment the company can actually pay," said Skolnic, who added that any bankruptcy filing could endanger the money getting back to the 32,000 plaintiffs represented in the suit. Skolnic said that there is still a lot of risk at this point, because any agreement that the parties reach must be approved by the court.

Rumors that an offer of $40 million to settle out of court were made to Skilled Healthcare were neither confirmed nor denied by attorneys for the plaintiffs. Skolnic said that if there is truth to the offer, a final judgment would likely be somewhere between $40 million and $100 million -- a ballpark number estimated as the highest amount that the company could pay without filing for bankruptcy.

Plaintiff's attorney Michael Thamer said that the fact the case went to mediation doesn't change anything, and that the goal at this point is to get an injunction filed against Skilled Healthcare that would mandate the company to comply with staffing requirements. The parties are slated to begin discussion this weekend, and are due back in court Aug. 9 to resolve any remaining issues.

"The earlier we get an injunction in place, the better it is for the residents of these facilities," said Thamer, who added that in almost 30 years of experience, he has never seen the kind of resistance in court that defense attorneys have displayed in numerous failed attempts to have the trial halted before it reached a jury verdict. "They obviously haven't gotten the message."